


my garden has not flourished, it has wilted

by caryophyllaceae (xphantomhive)



Series: puzzle pieces that don't quite fit together [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline, Cancer, F/F, Implied Child Abuse, Post-Scratch, angst as fuck, but it's there trust me, i'm in a gift war, it's background johndave, it's barely there but again it's there, it's pretty dramatic, mainly jaderose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:57:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9534797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xphantomhive/pseuds/caryophyllaceae
Summary: There are many weird feelings that exist. For example, losing a limb, but having the ghost sensation that it is still there. For Rose Lalonde, her weird feeling is that she knew Jade English, once, but it was much too long ago for her to remember the right way.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> this is war

In the dead of winter, nineteen-eighty-three, you meet Jade English for the first time. She wanders into the ninety-nine cent store you work the graveyard shift in at one in the morning, wearing a gardening hat that is so out of season that you can’t help but laugh quietly to yourself when you spot it. She smiles at you, easy and carefree, and asks if you sell any vegetable seeds. You inform her, with a small quirk of your lips that isn’t quite a smile but is on the verge of being one, that no, you do not sell vegetable seeds, and even if you did, it would one-hundred percent be the wrong time of year to be.

“It’s never the wrong time of year to plant a garden,” she informs you, though you assume she knows that yes, there is a wrong time of year to plant a garden, specifically when it’s so cold that the plants will wilt as soon as they stem half an inch out of the ground. “Especially a vegetable garden. Veggies are strong, they can make it through winter. Don’tcha think, kiddo?”

Though you are not fond of being called “kiddo,” you suppose you can give her a pass for calling you it, seeing as you are only seventeen and she has to be at least twenty-five, if not older. “I’m afraid I don’t agree, miss. No plants have the capability to withstand winter temperatures. If you’re in search of vegetables, why not just buy them at the grocery store?”

She shakes her head. “That stuff is just as bad for you as a bag of Doritos. The only good stuff is the stuff you plant yourself. Or stuff that was planted and picked by someone else, but that’s besides the point. Do you sell any gardening shit?”

“Fourth isle,” you give. “Though it isn’t very good quality.”

She shrugs with one shoulder and disappears into the first isle, and when she comes to the checkout, she has three bags of Sour Patch Kids and four different colors of gardening gloves. You ring her things up and make idle chatter with her while you do so, and you think you may know her, from somewhere. She tells you that her mother is Betty Crocker, but that she ran away when she was fifteen because the “batterbitch” as she eloquently puts it, was abusive. She tells you her brother never left. You wonder why she sees you fit to tell her story to, but you don’t argue. Something about the way her hair falls and her green eyes reminds you of something you cannot quite remember.

• •

The second time you see Jade English, it’s at a local carnival. This time, she is joined by a very short, very pale boy with bruises on his arms that are yellowing like old bruises do and a pink scar beneath his right eye. When she spots you, she calls, “Hey, witty kid from the ninety-nine cent store!” and you make your way to her, smiling softly. She asks you how you’ve been, like you’re old friends. Her companion looks at you in the way you look at someone you’re certain you’ve seen before—a person you know, but cannot quite place.

“I’ve been good, I suppose,” you respond, though you have not. Your mother died two weeks ago at thirty-nine of alcohol poisoning, and though she wasn’t much of a mother, you do miss her quite a bit. “And yourself?”

She is positively beaming. You want to bottle her smile up, turn it into a lamp for you to read and drink tea by. “Great! This is my brother, John. John Crocker. You’ve heard of him, I bet!”

He punches her in the arm, a blush resting high on his cheeks. You have indeed heard of him, but only because you spend most of your day and night watching television. He’s an aspiring comedian, supposedly the funniest in town, and you’ve been meaning to attend one of his shows. You just haven’t gotten around to it—nor have you found a date. “I have. I’ve heard that he’s quite funny. I would be interested in going to a show, but I just cannot seem to find a date.”

Jade English, bless her soul, says, “I’ll be your date, kid—I mean, Rose,” and something about the way she says your name makes your heart swell.

• •

Your ideal first date with someone would not generally be a comedy show, but for Jade English, you attend one as your “first date” though you are not actually dating. Her brother is as funny as you’ve heard he is, and when the show ends, you compliment him and he blushes, rubs the back of his neck and shifts his feet nervously. There is a man at the bar drinking himself silly, staring at John behind a pair of sunglasses, and you’re sure you have seen him somewhere, before. You think you know him.

That night, Jade English kisses you in the parking lot of a McDonald's. Her tongue tastes like Coca-Cola and cheeseburgers, but you can’t say you’re complaining. You are eighteen and she is twenty-eight, but you choose to ignore that fact and kiss her back readily, knotting your hands up in her wavy black hair, and something about the situation is all-too familiar. You could have sworn you’ve gone through this before, sharing a kiss with Jade English, but you do not think that was her name, then.

She holds your hand over the center console and calls you “Rosey” in a gentle voice, and the smile she gives you is something of a miracle.

• •

You are certain that Jade English is the love of your life, but when you tell her this she laughs and ruffles your hair with your hand, says, “I think you’re still a bit too young to decide that, kiddo. I’m probably not gonna be your first and last gal,” though you can tell by the look in her eyes that she knows much better than that, because you are hers and she has always been yours, no matter which life you are living. There isn’t much you can remember, but you get these fragments, occasionally. The sky itself is falling, and her hand is in yours, and though the world is coming to an end she is smiling at you, shaky and nervous, and the last thing you hear is her whisper, “I love you.”

On April thirteenth, nineteen-ninety, you get married to Jade English. Something about that date matters, but you cannot remember what. You are twenty-five and she is thirty-five. She kisses you softer than she ever has, and later that night, laying on the heart-shaped bed in your honeymoon hotel room, she tells you that you are still in the prime of your life and that she is getting older. That soon, she will be so much older than you. And you want to disagree, but you know she is right, know by the laugh-lines and wrinkles forming at the corners of her eyes and the strain in her voice, the bags under her eyes.

Slowly, she is wilting, but you are not even in full bloom yet.

• •

The year you turn forty, Jade is diagnosed with stomach cancer and informed that she only has three months left to live. You cry yourself to death in the waiting room, holding her brother’s hand over the armrest of a cheap plastic chair, promising him, through shaking sobs, that she is strong. That she will make it so much longer than that, that the doctors do not know Jade English like he and you do. But it is nothing more than an empty promise, a lie, meant to make the both of you feel better.

When you are allowed in Jade’s room later, she cracks a smile at you, allows you to kiss her and lay with her for hours, telling her all of the things you’ll be sure to do with her before she dies. She holds your hand and brushes her fingers through your hair, and you wonder why life chooses to take the kindest souls first.

• •

On the day Jade English dies, it rains for five hours on end. You sit by the window in your house, chin in palm, and watch the flowers in your garden droop beneath the weight of the rainwater. John has been calling you nonstop and you’ve been ignoring him, because you know he has someone of his own to tend to, someone of his own to hold him, and you know that you knew them all, once. Jade English was Jade Harley, and when the sky fell apart she held your hand and whispered into your hair that she loved you, that you were safe, that it was not the end.

John Crocker was John Egbert, and he loved a boy who looked like you, with red eyes and mirror-shades who pressed their foreheads together while the world cracked to pieces and repeated that he loved him, as a mantra. His name was Dave Strider—is, Dave Strider—and he was related to you, in some manner. They were your best friends, and they were in love.

When the rain lets up, you gather the flowers from the garden and leave them on the counter to wilt, and once they have, you press them into the pages of the scrapbook you and Jade had been working on together. In purple gel pen, you write,  _ how it feels each time Jade English (Harley) dies _ —and you cry so much that the paper peels up and yellows over a period of three days.

• •

Somewhere, in another universe, you wake up in an untidy room on a bed with purple silk sheets to the sound of your drunk mother stumbling around with someone downstairs, and Jade Harley lies on the right side of your bed, snoring loudly, her hand in yours. Next to your bed there is a laptop with a wall of blue and red text on it, and you breathe a sigh, smile softly, and lay back down.

**Author's Note:**

> you like jaderose, i like jaderose. you like johndave, i like johndave. we both like angst.
> 
> i'm in a gift war with gods_among_us. it's fucking on bro


End file.
